Finding My Voice as a Writer

One year ago I was wrapping up the final draft of The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett. I thoroughly loved writing the story but it was also one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. In my life I have written hundreds of short stories, essays, poems, but for my first published work I decided to write in first person for the first time -- not only in first person, but in the form of journal entries. Oh, holy crap was that a choice.

In the end it all worked but for months I labored to strike a balance between telling the story and showing the events through the character's eyes. In order to present it with a proper believability I had to restrain myself from describing things in too much detail, limiting what was shown to what the main character could possibly know or understand. During the course of the story he gradually succumbs to oppression and other factors that deteriorate his mental faculties until we're left with a story that has a number of loose ends.

In feedback and reviews I have had plenty of questions about these loose ends. My answer is, that there are more stories to be told within this universe that began with David Bennett's tale. He is just a small part of a world that will continue to expand over many novels. The other books aren't necessarily sequels or prequels but take place within the same universe and occasionally characters from one book will find themselves with roles in others. 

The storytelling will also evolve. 

In Maestra we will see a few familiar faces from The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett, but this isn't necessarily their story. This one belongs to new characters who are the focus of the events within. The perspective has also changed. I have traded first person for third person perspective in order to tell this tale properly. We have left the pure closed quarters paranormal horror behind and are venturing into a dynamic new world with fluid characters. Maestra is much more dark fantasy than horror, although there will be plenty of chilling events to freeze the soul within its binding.

I just finished the second draft of part one of three. It grew about 11,000 words from the first. The complete first draft of Maestra (then Maestri) was 105,000 words. It is safe to say that this draft will be anywhere from 130,000 to 150,000 words. A lot of elements are changing along the way. Some things that I thought would work in the first draft just didn't click by the end. Also, I came up with a few new ideas to incorporate before starting the second draft and I wanted to fit them in. Those things, along with fleshing out characters, locations, and events will lead to a hefty word count. I don't expect editing to knock the count back all that much.

So things are plopping along, a bit slowly, but they are happening. Hopefully I will have part two done by the end of June, or early July. Ideally I would love to have edits wrapped up in September.

In the meanwhile, The Morbid Fascinations of David Bennett is only 99 cents, right now, on Kindle or FREE with Kindle Unlimited. The paperback is also beautiful and would look wonderful in any physical collection. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1701845431

I hope you join me on the ground floor of this epic new universe, filled with things both wondrous and horrific.